Seattle - Today, a federal district court judge granted a motion by the Internet Archive to block enforcement of an overbroad Washington state anti-sex trafficking statute that could make online service providers criminally liable for providing access to third parties' offensive materials.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing the Internet Archive in order to invalidate SB 6251, a law aimed at combatting advertisements for underage sex workers but with vague and overbroad language that is squarely in conflict with federal law. EFF last week appeared in federal district court in Seattle to argue that the court should grant a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the criminal statute while the lawsuit is ongoing. The court today agreed with the Internet Archive, finding that the statute likely violated the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the dormant Commerce Clause, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

"We are grateful that the Court agreed with our concerns about the gravity of the structural problems with this statute," said Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "While everyone involved in this case agrees that sex trafficking is an abhorrent practice, the approach used in this statute to combat the problem is fundamentally and irretrievably flawed. States cannot make those who provide access to online information -- like libraries or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) -- responsible for the illegal behavior of third party users, under threat of criminal penalties. Prosecuting criminals themselves will always be the better approach."

SB 6251 was passed with the hope of criminalizing the dissemination of underage sex trafficking ads and imposing a requirement to confirm the ages of individuals in such ads prior to publication. The law, however, is fraught with problems. As written, the vaguely-worded statute -- making it a felony to "directly or indirectly" provide access to any material that might constitute an "explicit or implicit" commercial offer for sex -- could be read to apply not only to posters but to neutral entities that provide access to online information, including ISPs, Internet cafes, and libraries. This would result in a chilling effect as such entities begin feeling pressured to censor protected online speech in order to safely stay on the right side of an unclear law. The Internet Archive is particularly concerned with any statute that seeks to make intermediaries responsible for content created by third parties -- the Internet Archive itself currently makes available over 150 billion archived web pages from 1996 to the present and has no practical ability to screen its collection for illegal content.

With the statute now enjoined, the plaintiffs (including Backpage.com, which has filed a separate complaint challenging the legality of the law) will now move for a final declaration by the court that the statute is illegal.

Related Updates

In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service...

Almost all posts on social media include depictions of real people. And most social media websites include advertising. Does this combination mean that nearly everyone featured on social media can sue for infringement of their right of publicity? That would be disruptive. Fortunately, a new ruling [PDF] by...

There’s a new bill in Congress that would threaten your right to free expression online. If that weren’t enough, it could also put small Internet businesses in danger of catastrophic litigation. Don’t let its name fool you: the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693) wouldn’t help punish...

This weekend Apple took a dispiriting step in the policing of its Chinese mainland App store: the company removed several Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications that allowed users to circumvent the China’s extensive internet censorship apparatus. In effect, the company has once again aided the Chinese government in...

In recent months, social media platforms—under pressure from a number of governments—have adopted new policies and practices to remove content that promotes terrorism. As the Guardian reported, these policies are typically carried out by low-paid contractors (or, in the case of YouTube, volunteers) and with little to no transparency...

The First Amendment protects our right to use electronic devices to record on-duty police officers, according to a new ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Fields v. Philadelphia. This right extends to anyone with a recording device, journalists and members of the...

Can the government stop you from finding out it’s been looking through your private Facebook content as part of a “secret” investigation that’s not actually secret? That’s the question raised by an alarming case pending in the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals. Facebook has described the investigation as "known to...

Update 5:00pm: Zillow has released a statement saying the company has "decided against moving forward with legal action." EFF is pleased that Zillow has withdrawn its threat and won't be seeking to take down any of the posts on McMansion Hell. We hope that other companies seeking to shut...

A country has the right to prevent the world’s Internet users from accessing information, Canada’s highest court ruled on Wednesday. In a decision that has troubling implications for free expression online, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a company’s effort to force Google to de-list entire domains and websites...

EFF has just launched the Summer Security Camp, a two-week membership drive that challenges people everywhere to gather ‘round the online rights movement and prepare for the privacy and free speech challenges in their paths. Through the 4th of July, anyone can join EFF or renew as a...